Our client is a leading global manufacturer that makes products to improve the quality of our everyday life.

Business Objective:

Our client’s objective was to deliver a solution that could ultimately help support a process to generate a Consensus Demand Forecast that included:

A statistically generated baseline Sell Thru Forecast using Retailer Point of Sale (POS) data that is owned and changed by the Sales Managers

A calculated Sell In Forecast based on the Sell Thru Forecast, On Hand Inventory, and Weeks of Supply goals

A statistically generated baseline Shipment Forecast using historical sales data from Oracle that is owned and managed by the Demand Planners

A Consensus Demand Plan established through a collaborative process between Sales Managers and Demand Planners that becomes the basis of a plan for both Finance (without a buffer) and Supply Chain/Operations (with a buffer).

Solution Offered By TekLink:

TekLink provided a project team that partnered with our client to deliver the following using Anaplan’s cloud-based planning and performance management platform:

Statistically generated forecast is an input, which the Demand Planner uses as intelligence to adjust the go-in consensus forecast

System allows the Demand Planner to produce a statistically based Sell-In (Shipment) forecast by SKU and Account

Hyperion Data Loads and Global Reporting

Brought both versions of the Sell-In Shipment forecasts together for collaboration in the monthly Consensus Review Meeting

Changes resulting from collaboration meeting are made to the Demand Planner Forecast and take into consideration the Sales Manager input (and others).

Created KPI’s and reports to support the process

Created a Consensus forecast with and without a buffer for distribution to Operations and Finance respectively.

Consensus Analysis reports created to facilitate this collaboration process

Outcomes and Benefits:

Our client realized the following outcomes and benefits:

First ever solution for forecasting Point of Sale (POS) and Sell-In Demand

Forecast on a rolling 18-month horizon, which provides deeper insights into future outcomes and better decision making

Highly automated solution that shifts business users time from being data stewards to data analysts

Automation, real-time data aggregation/consolidation and improvement in overall data accuracy has produced time savings and a more efficient process

Solution allows Sales Managers, Demand Planners, and Consensus Team to collaborate and align on a Consensus Sell-In Forecast

Solution generates a statistical forecast using historical POS data and Seasonal Algorithms as the basis and starting point for the Sell-Thru Forecast

Solution became the basis for constructing both a Sell-Thru Forecast by Sales Managers and a Sell-In Forecast by Demand Planners and Sales Managers

Over time, the client believes the solution will result in improved forecast accuracy, which was a key objective of the project.

Customer Quote:

“I truly believe the Anaplan Forecasting Tool developed in close partnership with TekLink will allow our company to have better visibility into our consumer and customer demand. The ability to monitor and accurately predict retailer inventory levels is an organizational muscle which will pay dividends throughout the organization: From strategy to finance to supply chain. The Anaplan Forecasting Tool will help to improve on what was a very time consuming, manual, and inaccurate process for our company.”

SAP Business Objects BI (also known as BO or BOBJ) is a suite of front-end applications that allow business users to view, sort and analyze business intelligence data. These applications serve the following business intelligence and analytics needs:

Business Intelligence Platform: Makes information consumption simple, personalized, and dynamic. It also add the benefits of a flexible and scalable information infrastructure

Data Discovery and Visualization: Empowers business users by including visual data discovery tools as part of their BI portfolio. The tools are Lumira and Explorer.

Reporting: Using tools like Web Intelligence and Crystal reports, caters to large datasets with requirements of ad-hoc analysis and scheduling the delivery of the refreshed reports to a choice of destination.

Being an SAP Partner, we always keep a very close look on the upcoming tools and strategy of SAP on SAP BO BI. The road map provided by SAP is always a challenge, as they keep on changing their strategy to make it highly compatible and high performing front end BI solution with their SAP Products. TekLink has always been able to provide the best and sustainable solution many clients.